Through new eyes . . .

"Oh . . . the stars!" Tsz-Chun had stopped dead on the sidewalk to our house and was looking up, mesmerized by the brilliance of our winter night sky. I nearly ran into him with my bags of groceries. We all looked up and gazed for several minutes at the hundreds and thousands of stars crowding the Milky Way above our heads.
I thought I appreciated living in our little part of Utah, but it's taken getting a foreign exchange student from Hong Kong to remind me how really great we have it. Everything amazes him. He's never travelled and from what he says, Hong Kong is huge, noisy, dirty and smoggy by day and bright and flashy by night. The first day we stepped out of the house, he breathed in and in his limited English, gushed "So fresh! The air in Hong Kong is . . . blue . . ." The day after he arrived, we all had to work or school so he slept in and just got used to the house, just walking around our modest home that he calls "huge! Only rich people in Hong Kong have so much room." His apartment that he shares with his parents and grandmother is smaller than the family room, kitchen and master bedroom. He comments every day on the bigness, wide-openness, and friendliness of Utahns. The kids at school couldn't have treated him better; he's already famous and everyone wants to get to know him.
I know he misses like crazy his family and girlfriend and especially his grandmother's cooking (not a surprise to me), but he's completely open and absorbing this American experience. And despite the fact that he's reaffirmed my love of this place by seeing things through his eyes, Hong Kong must be a good place to live, too, because it has produced his family and this wonderful, curious, respectful young man who is already a blessing to our family.